


you can be the corpse and i can be the killer

by dreadfulbeauties



Category: Arthurian Mythology
Genre: Grief/Mourning, Heavy Angst, M/M, Unhappy Ending, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Unhealthy Relationships, mordred is not nice
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-05
Updated: 2020-06-09
Packaged: 2021-03-04 04:28:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,957
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24547654
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dreadfulbeauties/pseuds/dreadfulbeauties
Summary: Sir Percival and Sir Mordred have nearly nothing in common. One is a third of the Grail Knights, revered for his kindness but considered dull of mind. The other is the king's bastard son, revered for his sharp mind but considered hard of heart.The key word here is nearly. There is one thing they do have in common. They never got over a certain knight's death. And that is what will be their undoing.
Relationships: Dulaque | Lancelot du Lac/Guinevere (Arthurian), Mordred/Percival (Arthurian)
Kudos: 9





	1. i look at the world

_I look then at the silly walls  
_ _Through dark eyes in a dark face—  
_ _And this is what I know:  
_ _That all these walls oppression builds  
_ _Will have to go!_

_—Langston Hughes, I look at the world_

It hasn’t even been a year since Galahad died, and yet his memory’s a weak flicker in Percival’s mind.

He’s faded. Washed-out, a feeble mimicry of Percival’s first love. He can’t remember the precise cadence of his voice, nor the specific color of his eyes—green, Percival knows, but of what kind? The pale green of summer leaves or the deep, rich green of white-veined jade? He can’t remember.

Camelot’s knights are recovering, and he is recovering with them. True, they brought back Galahad’s corpse after he died in Percival’s arms—he can remember the song he sung and the hollowness of his face towards the end, and he wishes he didn’t because he doesn’t want to remember that, he wants to remember the afternoons they spent together with the lazy summer sun shining bright and warm on their faces, of secret codes spoken through fingers intertwined and stolen kisses. They’re all fine, shakily getting themselves back on the path even though they had to bury Galahad’s broken body in the ground. Percival, most of all, is the one who still wears a smile on his face. He is alright, he is fine. And he works damningly hard to keep it that way.

He can remember the way Mordred’s face twisted when he hauled Galahad’s cold and unmoving body from the dungeon’s depths. Mordred did not cry or say a thing other than “We ought to bring him back. The others will wonder what happened to him.” And yet though he was silent with the light reflecting off his spectacles, Percival knew all that he wanted to say—now in the dead arms of winter Mordred still hasn’t said a thing.

How dare you? Mordred seems to say every time he and Percival so much as cross paths. How dare you get to live on while Galahad dies? He was my anchor, the closest thing to someone that cared about me. And he picked _you_ before he died, and left me dead with him.

They’re all walking corpses, Percival thinks. They walk through Camelot as fleeting ghosts this winter. They may make merry as Christmas draws near, Bring out the wine and mead and celebrate the Queen’s child to come. Percival pretends to.

“What do you think you’ll name it, Your Majesty?” He asks her.

It’s Christmas Eve. Laughter brightens the dreary, cold halls, the tapestries draped over the stone wall are rich with color. Outside is naught but snow, gripping the world in icy white that’s tinted blue in the night’s shadows. Guinevere smiles. He likes her smile—it’s real, especially with the crow’s feet that crease at the corner of her deep blue eyes. Sort of like his own, Percival thinks. He hasn’t really thought about how much they look alike, though they share no common blood.

“If my child’s a boy, I’d name him Sagramore. It’s from the tree name of sycamore, I believe.”

“And if Your Majesty has a daughter?”

“Laurel. Like the wreaths Greek victors of long ago wore so often. And I’m certain regardless of whether I have son or daughter, Mordred would make a perfectly wonderful brother.”

“What’s this about me being an older brother?”

Mordred seats himself at the wooden table, seat creaking beneath him. Even seated, he towers over Percival and Guinevere. His brown eyes are dark and sharp behind his spectacles, and his hair is white as paper. Percival’s heard rumors that it was Mordred’s real mother, a woman Morgause, who’s responsible for it. He doesn’t know, and doesn’t want to ask.

Mordred eyes the barely-there swell of Guinevere’s stomach and a false smile flickers over his face. “Ah, of course. My sibling to be, just a twinkle in my eye.”

“It might be hard adjusting, I know this, Mordred. But I’ll have you know that I love you very much, and I have room in my heart to love both of my children, too. And I do genuinely think with all my heart that you’d make a good older brother. I think you’d be able to teach your baby brother or sister quite a lot about the world. THat’s a very important trait for an older brother to have, wouldn’t you agree?”

“Of course, Your Majesty. Of course.”

_It’s all fake,_ Percival thinks. They all speak so animatedly, join in and look from the sidelines on the festivities as though not a thing were out of place. There’s a tapestry that they’re all woven into; a gaping hole is torn right where a certain knight who died for the sake of a God unknown is supposed to be. Even Guinevere. She knows that Galahad’s death in trying to retrieve still lingers fresh in their minds. But they don’t have time to grieve, not when the very quest that sought to bring them all together proved them wrong. It’s already winter now, shouldn’t they bury the past in the snow and move forward? 

He wishes Galahad had failed on the Grail quest. Maybe if he had Camelot would not be slipping through their fingers like sand. Maybe if he was here everything truly _would_ be alright, and Mordred wouldn’t have to tolerate him because all would be well. He wishes that Galahad had come back downcast and disappointed that he had failed, before he would take him aside and tell him it wasn’t his fault for seeking out a _cup_ of all things to prove his worth to God, that he was already worthy from the beginning—

_You can’t think like that. It’s selfish._

“…I need a bit of fresh air,” Percival says.

Guinevere eyes him over a glass of wine. “Something the matter?”

_Everything._ “Sorry, I have a bit of headache and need to step out, Your Majesty.”

“Are you sure you’re not feeling too ill? You’re looking pale as death, Sir Percival.”

“I’m fine!” He says. _Don’t make anyone worry about you more than they have to, and even that’s too much._ “Just a slight headache, like I said I just need air.”

He hurries out of the room suffocated by laughter and false cheer and though he doesn’t spare a glance behind him, Percival knows for certain that Mordred’s eyes are focused on him. He sprints through the twisting halls of the castle, past some of the other drunken knights gathered in small clusters throughout the hall, swiping at his eyes as he does. He won’t cry. It’s been long enough, he shouldn’t have to think about Galahad so much now.

Frigid air greets Percival when he steps outside of the castle. The trees tower, painted black by the dim shadows and branches coated with a thin coat of white. He can feel the snow muffling all noise save for his own footsteps. He’s not dressed for the weather and thinks that maybe he ought to go back inside and fetch his cloak or gloves. His fingers will grow red and stiff in the cold. 

But Percival’s mesmerized by the fat snowflakes that settle on the ground. They pile up at night like this so that the world looks pristine and white by morning. It never matters how gray and dirty the snow will get, how slushy and wet it will become after a few days. By morning the ground will be smothered in a fresh layer of white, piling on and making the world look new again even though spring will melt it away and reveal it for what it is.

“You’re woefully underdressed for this weather, Sir Percival.”

Yellow light illuminates Mordred’s silhouette in the doorway of the castle. He steps out, dark cloak framing his face. Silver moonlight’s shed upon his glasses, haloing his face in a mask of white hair. Percival feels his stomach clench.

“I know. I just needed to clear my head. I shan’t be out here for too long, Sir Mordred.”

“Oh, there’s no need for the formalities. We both know each other quite well and we called each other by our first names for long enough. What makes you think it’s any different now?” Mordred smiles thinly down at him.

“Alright then, Mordred. I’m just out here to clear my head for a moment.”

“If that’s the case, then I might as well be out here, too.”

He settles against the stone wall next to Percival, staring up at the dark blue-grey sky framed by spindly tree branches.

“Quite pretty, isn’t it?” Percival says. 

“What is?”

“All of this.” He gestures to the snow. “So pure and white and lovely. Perfect for a Christmas Eve like this one.”

Mordred says nothing. His eyes drink in the scenery. Then:

“Why do you insist on being nice to me?”

Percival shivers. “What do you mean, Mordred?”

“You know perfectly well what I mean. You’ve kept up that naive squire attitude long enough, and you’ve even got the other knights fooled about it even though you’re already twenty-one—two years younger than me, I might add. That’s perfectly old enough to know that you ought not to trust the world and the world ought not to trust you. So why do you insist on being nice to me?”

“I try to be kind to everyone.”

“It’s a waste of time. Deplorable. You saw that, didn’t you? You know of what goes on between the Queen and Sir Lancelot. Most of us do, except for Father. He’s like you. Or at least what everyone thinks you are. Too naive. Too willing to believe in the good.”

“I—”

Mordred takes a step forward. He leans in close—too close, Percival thinks.

“I know you don’t like me. Hate me, perhaps. And I don’t like you very much myself, either. You fooled the rest of the court with that flighty little act of naivete you haven’t even gotten rid of now that Galahad’s dead. But you won’t fool me, so don’t bother.”

“What do you _mean_? It isn’t an act, Mordred! I’m just myself!”

“And being yourself was what ended up with Galahad dead!” Mordred snaps. Percival flinches. Though he hasn’t laid a hand on him it’s still as though he’s been slapped, the words stinging his heart as a mark might sting his face.

“It’s your fault Galahad is dead and gone, his corpse rotting in the ground. You were never fast enough—I loved him, I could have saved him if they’d sent me. And I knew how he thought of you, and since I wanted nothing more for him to be happy I let him be. But he’s dead. And for what? A damned _goblet_? His soul may be in heaven, but his body is unmoving and buried and there is no bringing him back.” 

“I know it’s my fault, Mordred. There’s no need to rub it in. I know that I wasn’t fast enough to help Galahad, and never will be. Maybe if I’d gotten there we could have traded places and he could have at least had you. But you’ll never know him. You just saw what everyone else saw—and at least Galahad did what he could in the name of God, didn’t he? You never saw him for what he was. He looked the part of an angel but he was so miserable.”

“Of course you’d know. You were the one he was closer to, after all. Closer to him than I ever was, anyway.”

“You didn’t know how he suffered. Didn’t know the sort of person his mother was, or how he spent his entire life trying to prove himself to a father who was a reminder of a _mistake_. His family destroyed him from the inside out, whether or not they intended to, and if he hadn’t clung on so fiercely to the comfort of a God unknown he might have ended up rotted and decaying to the bone. Surely he’s happier in heaven now that he’s proven himself to the one he devoted his life to.”

“Well maybe if God was a merciful, good one like you make Him out to be, he would have saved Galahad. Since you were too weak to ever do it.”

Percival thinks that’s why he throws the first punch.

He pulls Mordred to his feet. He can feel the material of his tunic tearing in his hands. Mordred wrenches himself away,

“I _know_ I’m weak, _know_ I’m nothing—but you just stood by and _let_ him die instead of defying the other knights!”

Mordred wipes the blood smeared from his nose and pulls himself from Percival’s grasp. He delivers a kick to his stomach and Percival’s sprawled against the ground. He breaths in shakily, tasting phlegm.

“Hypocrite. Hypocrite. You still stood by. You _let_ him go, too.”

He grabs Percival by the collar and slams him into the ground. Pain erupts in his skull and he swallows down a scream.

“It’s your fault!” Mordred screams. 

Percival reaches up to scratch at him. He rakes streaky pink lines against Mordred’s face—hardly enough to draw blood. 

_I know it’s my fault,_ he thinks.

He drags himself back up, exhaling shakily. Then he reaches down to hit Mordred in the stomach.

“You said—” Mordred steadies himself before beating at Percival again “—You said you would have traded places with him if you could. And I wish you did! I wish you were _dead_!”

Mordred hits him again and he tastes phlegm mixed with blood. _Get up,_ he tells himself. _Get up and go back inside._ He slams his hand into Percival’s ribs and he winces. _Focus. Get up. Leave._

The blow to Mordred is too sluggish. Before Percival registers the dodge, he can feel his ribs crack as Mordred punches him. He stumbles, he doesn’t fall— _don’t fall down, you might never get up again_ —but it’s all so cold. It’s all so dreadfully, numbingly cold. He struggles to so much as form a fist with his hands, that’s how stuff his fingers are. For a moment, Percival thinks that he might die here. If Mordred doesn’t kill him, then the frostbite certainly will—

“What is going _on_?”

Sir Kay stumbles out. He carries a torch in one hand, dark eyes wide at the sight. He sees the blood stained across the snow, Mordred and Percival with clothes torn up and fresh injuries patterning their skin, and connects the dots.

* * *

“This is going to hurt.”

Kay doesn’t play pretend like everyone else here. He doesn’t treat Percival as though he’s the same wide-eyed young boy that showed up at Camelot all these years ago. They’re within the castle walls now—not quite safe, but Percival will at least not die of frostbite outside. Kay, at least, does not pretend all is well.

Percival nods. “We’ve been through this before. It always hurts.”

Kay swipes at the fresh wound on Percival’s lower lip with a damp cloth. The sudden wetness stings and he flinches. He knew it was bound to happen, though. The wounds always sting, no matter how much he tries to convince himself they’ll never be that bad. Strange, though, that even as Mordred beat him and wished he was dead that Percival did nothing and still does nothing. Winter has a strange way, numbing everyone and everything in its grasp. Perhaps that is what happens here, too.

The torchlight casts dark shadows on the stone walls. The wounds still sting, even after Kay coats the split skin in ointment and washes the wounds free of blood. He bandages Percival slowly, rolling out the strips of white. He never looks Percival directly in the eye. His attention is simply on his current work, which is getting the bandages ready and healing Percival.

“If you’re alright with telling me, what was it that happened? Whatever it was, I’m sure Sir Mordred didn’t have a good reason to hurt you like that.”

Percival swallows. “I was the one who hit him first.”

Kay looks up. “You were?”

“Yes.”

“You didn’t say anything about it, though.”

“I didn’t want to talk about it then.”  
“And I suppose you still don’t want to talk about it now.” Kay speaks in bitter tones.

“Wait—” Percival takes a deep breath. “I want to talk about it. Just a little.”

“Very well.” Kay begins winding a bandage around Percival’s arm.

“We were talking earlier. He said something that made me upset and… I hit him.”

“Strange. You’re not one to easily get upset.”

I do, Percival says in his mind. But you nor anyone else thinks to ask. Because I’m always the one supposed to be the bright-eyed and smiling one of the Round Table. Aren’t I?

But instead he says, “I know. But it only happened this time. It’s not usually like this. You all know.”

“Care to tell me what it was you two were fighting one another about?”

_Do I lie? I don’t want to lie, I can’t stand lying. It feels like maggots are squirming around in my mouth every time I do. But this is Sir Kay—I’m certain he wouldn’t understand. He’s always been so harsh with the rest of us. Surely he won’t be any different with me._

“…It was about Galahad.” He stares down at the bandage on his arm.

Kay begins tending to another wound. “Go on, if you wish.”

“He said it was my fault that Galahad’s dead. And don’t tell me it wasn’t. I know it was. We all know it was. But that wasn’t all. He said that maybe God could’ve saved him since I was too weak to do it.” Percival looks down to his lap. “I’m sorry for bringing this up at all, I really am. I shouldn’t talk this much about it with you of all people, and the fact that this is even upsetting to me even so long after Galahad’s death is so stupid, and I—”

“Look at me, Sir Percival.” His dark blue eyes dart around the tiny room. “Look at me.”

He forces himself to look at Kay. He feels a pair of steadied, calloused hands holding his.

“Death hurts. It hurt when my own father died.”

“Sir Ector?”

Kay nods. “The very one. Someone dying is not just something you can recover from so easily.”

“But His Majesty says you carried on and were such a trouper after his death!”

“I tried to be. Just as you are now. Death is not something you can get over. You will get past this and become happier. You will find better things in life for you. But Galahad dying isn’t something any of us can just get over, let alone you. He was someone you were so very close to. And he was my student.”

_You liked him because he was a prodigy,_ Percival thinks. _An achievement._

“I liked Galahad because he was kind. I didn’t know him well, but his death affected me as it does you. Sometimes you need to grieve. I never really got that chance.”

Percival nods. He knows Kay is right. Galahad’s ghost is still with them. It is in that one solitary chair at the round table where a certain fair-haired knight ought to sit. He always half-expects to wake up with Galahad clutched in his arms. That absence is in the way he’ll take longer and longer walks in the woods, as though expecting to find Galahad standing beneath a tree. They were each other’s lifelines, before and during the Grail quest. Galahad was an anchor, and how can he keep on keeping on so easily when his anchor is ripped out of his hands?

He still will shy away from Mordred. He’ll keep his distance. 

But he knows from what Galahad had told him that he was Mordred’s anchor, too.


	2. and thou art dead, as young and fair

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warning: non graphic, implied sex here. it's much more fade to black and there's no graphic descriptions of what happens, but to those who might be squicked out or even be genuinely upset by the topic i thought it would be important to warn you.

_And thou art dead, as young and fair  
As aught of mortal birth;  
And form so soft, and charms so rare,  
Too soon return'd to Earth!  
Though Earth reciev'd them in her bed,  
And o'er the spot the crowd may tread  
In carelessness or mirth,  
There is an eye which could not brook  
A moment on that grave to look._

_\- Lord Byron, “And Thou art Dead, as Young and Fair”_

Percival and Mordred don’t grow any closer that winter. There is no sudden revelation of friendship, they are not brothers in arms or knights who have one another’s back. None of that exists between the two of them. When Percival awakens the next morning he does not stop by Mordred to apologize to him for the way he hit him last night, nor does Mordred say anything about last night. But nothing is not all they have.

Here is what Percival sees: He catches a glimpse of what lurks beneath Mordred’s surface. He, like Galahad, does not—perhaps did not, because Camelot’s a kingdom of walking ghosts by this point—want to rot away. He tries to blend in as yet another blade of grass in the field he is pained with every step he takes, every breath he inhales. He does not cry out for help because he doesn’t think anyone will want to help him. Beneath the bastard son of the king that outright stated he hated Percival, there is a shattered, broken boy.

But Percival thinks about it later and the thought worms its way into his mind. And he wishes that he had not been the one to throw the first blow.

“Pardon, Sir Kay, but could you give this letter to Mordred?”

Kay stares down at him, so small in his line of vision and clutching the envelope sealed shut with a smear of dried red wax. He raises his eyebrows at the sight—it’s stupid, Percival thinks to himself, you’re stupid for thinking Kay would do this for you—and gives a near imperceptible nod of his head.

“Of course,” he says. “I can give him your letter.” He takes it from Percival’s hands and walks away. Most of that day is spent wondering what Mordred might think when he pries away the sticky red wax and slides the letter from the envelope, gaze skimming over Percival’s words. I am sorry for what I’d done, Percival had written, And I hope you are aware of that, yet I can not quite find the right words to grasp so that you know how I really feel. The apology is restrained—he says nothing of Galahad, not even a passing mention of him. But he hopes that it is enough.

Later that day, though, he watches Kay take the letter from his pocket and toss it into the fire.

Percival doesn’t know if Kay can tell he’s there watching the envelope get swallowed up by the flickering flames of orange and white, and doesn’t care to ask. Besides, if he was really as willing to be honest with Mordred as he thought he was, he should have spoken to him face-to-face.

* * *

The departure of snow is there to make way for spring’s green. While the air is still light with chill, the first blossoms sprout from the dark branches of trees like flowery pox. The sun shines bright and once more the woods are alive with the noises of animals slowly waking up from hibernation. It is a heralding of life returning, old and new.

Camelot is not as lucky. Maybe, Percival thinks, Mordred was right. Maybe they are all corpses, struggling not to rot to the point where they can’t even stand as they feign normalcy. Worst of all is their king: His reassuring smile and kind words will eventually give way to stinking, rotten flesh and crumbling bones. The rest of the world may be very much alive and breathing, but everyone else in Camelot is dead.

One mild spring night, he, Kay and Bors discussing which knights to send out on patrol for the evening. Bors is there to tell him. Though he tries to focus on the chirping of birds just beyond the castle windows and the wind ruffling the flower-patterned trees—anything to distract him from Camelot’s rot—Percival’s drawn to Bors’ large handlebar moustache poking out just above one lip.

“We’re to send two knights for tonight’s patrol. We’ve had a rather mellow winter, but with spring… spring means more monsters coming out of hibernation. You remember what happened with the Questing Beast, do you not?”

“Father told me that story,” Percival says. “Many times.”

“Well, we’ve decided to pair you with Sir Mordred’s for tonight’s patrol.”

Kay slams his palm on the table. He clenches his jaw so hard Percival can nearly hear his teeth crack. His eyebrows furrow, stress lines creasing and distorting his face.

“We are _not_ sending out Sir Mordred and Sir Percival together,” he snaps.

“Come now, Sir Kay, it’s only for one night—”

“Not after what happened the last time they were left alone! Not after the two of them got into such an awful spat! I _refuse_ to let Percival near him this time, it simply isn’t right—”

“It’s alright, Sir Kay.”

Percival swallows, looking down at his hands. If he concentrates on the whorls of his fingertips he will not have to look up at either of them. He inhales and continues.

“I’ll go on patrol tonight. Sir Kay knows it was my fault I got into that fight with Sir Mordred. He’s just trying to cover for me. I already know it was my fault, and I’m sorry. I know you’re worried. I just don’t want to make enemies with someone who people hate enough already.”

“Sir Percival—”

“Sir Kay, you are not my father. So I beg of you to stop acting like it.”

Kay nods sharply and slumps in his seat, dark brown eyes still scrutinizing Percival sharply.

“So, Sir Bors, I suppose I’ll see Sir Mordred for patrol tonight?”

“I suppose you will. You’re designated the woods behind the castle. Rumor has it that a manticore or some other beast has gotten loose back there.”

“If it’s true, Sir Mordred and I will do what we can.”

He meets Mordred in the faint twilight later on. Mordred already has his shield tucked against one arm. The pollen is prominent in the night air, making Percival’s eyelids flicker a little. Were it not for the monster that perhaps lurks in the woods, he would be tempted to curl up against a tree and fall asleep. Forever, perhaps. Not death. Just a very, very long rest that he would wake up from when all would be well again.

“I suppose we ought to start our trek into the woods? See if the creature’s even there,” Mordred says.

“We should.”

They make their way down a path lit rose-gold by fading sunlight that turns silver the deeper they go into the woods and the darker it gets. The forest trail beneath his feet is familiar even at night. He can see the silhouettes of gnarled trees lining the way, hear the faint chittering of animals if he listens closely enough. Other than that, it is silent. And for Percival, the silence is near deafening.

“Mordred?” His voice is small in the dead of night.

No response. But he can still Mordred walking alongside him with the crunching of leaves beneath his feet.

“Mordred? I’m certain you can’t see me—perhaps you can hear me?”

Nothing. 

“I’m sorry.”

The crunching of leaves ceases.

“I’m sorry for all that I’ve said,” he says, struggling to find at least a silhouette of Mordred in the dark. “I’m sorry for hitting you the last time we spoke. I shouldn’t have done that. You were right. It was my fault, and I kept making excuses for it—and I _hate_ when people make excuses for things, or treat me as though I were still a child, I hate receiving so much pity for all that I’ve gone through. And I’m sorry. I know you’re hurting, too. I know you’ve grown up hurting because of your mother, and because of your father. I know that it’s hard for you, even though I will never truly feel the pain you have. But I—”

Mordred pushes him up against a tree to kiss him.

Percival cannot stop thinking about how wrong it is. Mordred is rough when he kisses him, digging around in his mouth with his tongue and his hands gripping tight onto Percival’s hair. If Galahad is the soft petals of a rose, Percival thinks as he fumbles for balance, then Mordred is the thorns wrapped around the step: Harsh and sharp and brutal and most of all unforgiving. They both wait for something that they will never see, because they’re nothing but broken promises and missed opportunities.

Mordred’s kisses are thorns, and Percival wonders if he scrapes himself against a thorn for long enough if he will begin to bleed. But he would not cry or do anything about it, because it’s all his fault he thought he could pick a flower and not see the day it would wilt and crumble away. They are doing this all to themselves—every bit of blood that blooms from the cuts on their fingers, every little burning pain that erupts in their throat and heart because of the poison, every lingering burn on the wrists from the dragging of a flame-tipped candle dripping wax is all their own doing.

Mordred is the one who pulls away. He shoves Percival away, ridding the woods of silence with their breathing.

“I hate you,” his eyes say to Percival, “And I want nothing more than to break you. I am already broken, and I am going to drag you down with me.”

Percival does not say anything with his voice nor his eyes. They have planted blooms for a new flower that is about to burst into bloom, and choke around the two of them. And Percival is broken enough already, so to him it does not matter if he and Mordred become one with the decay and soil.

He peels himself away from the tree. “Mordred—”

“We have a beast to kill.”

He follows Mordred into the night. This is the closest they will ever have to understanding, Percival knows. They cannot quite replicate what he had with Galahad, and what Mordred wanted. So they try. They try and create their own twisted, distorted imitation of solace. This is all they will ever have and nothing more. 

What do you see? He wonders to himself as Mordred steps forward. What do you see when you look at me? Do you see the boy who had gotten Galahad—not a prize, but a human—first? Do you see me for myself? Or do you see me as a replacement?

The last thought makes him sting. Maybe to Mordred he and Galahad are one and the same, and now that the first one’s dead and gone he’s to be used as a doppelganger. But it isn’t as if Percival has anyone else to truly call his, either.

He knows that Mordred holds hate in his heart for him. He knows he deserves it, he thinks that as he stumbles into the clearing where the manticore lurks and is the first one to rush in and hack at it with his sword. He can hear the cracking of bones and the tearing of muscle beneath metal, steels himself to the sound of metal scraping away fur-covered flesh. He’s deaf to the manticore’s snarling. He doesn’t care if he dies here. At least dying here would mean not have to wake up to reality the next morning. And he’s told himself otherwise—Mordred cannot stand him, and though he has Kay and Bors there is only so much they can do to ease the ache in his heart. He has virtually no one.

So why is Mordred the one who hacks off the manticore’s head and shields him from it? Why is Mordred the one who strokes at his blood-matted hair? He’s smiling, pale hair and smile illuminated by the soft silver moonlight. It softens the harsh lines of his features, makes him look a little less like the person Percival had kept his distance from.

“You might have died back there,” he whispers. “I wouldn’t have wanted that.”

_But is this not what people who love one another do? Isn’t that what happens?_

“Even though I push you away, you’re still drawn to me. Why is that?”

_Because I want to fix you. You can be healed. You can be saved._

But instead Percival says, “I don’t know.”

When he goes back to the castle there is nothing in his heart or mind at all. They don’t have what he had with Galahad. They never will. And though Percival thinks maybe this might be wrong, he remembers that he was the one who’d crept out of the woods to Camelot so many years ago. For so long, that little castle in the woods had been all he’d ever known. Maybe this is more right than he thought it to be. Mordred is the one who offers to clean the blood off him, which he does. 

Mordred makes him feel alive again.

He knows that it is not love they have, only a sad and cold copy of it. He listens to Percival that night, cradles him close as he finally crumbles and weeps softly in his arms. He knows that he’s an extension of Galahad, just as much of a ghost as Galahad is now. Mordred hears him, though he may not listen—those are not one and the same. Camelot destroyed them both. Galahad thought he could go to Camelot and be hurt no more, but look what they did, Percival thinks, look at how they destroyed him from the inside out. And now him, too, who is slowly rotting away till he’s nothing but dust and ashes to be blown away in the wind, and how he’ll have nothing after that. And he knows how Mordred clung onto that anchor of theirs, saw something a little closer to a person than the rest of Camelot’s ilk.

“They’ll pay for this,” Mordred whispers to him. “Every single one of them. Lancelot. Guinevere. Arthur. They killed him. Camelot’s no great kingdom. They will pay.”

Percival doesn’t quite hear him. He knows Mordred is hurting—surely it is the pain that speaks for him, uses him as a ventriloquist would use a puppet.

“I’m sorry for what they put you through,” he sobs. “I’m sorry for how I treated you. I know you’re no monster. I know you’re not evil. You are not the person everyone says you are.”

He asks for a lifeline. Mordred hands him a noose.

That night Percival comes to Mordred later, when his wounds are bandaged and he can’t bear one more night of waking up and not feeling a second body next to his. He creeps over to Mordred’s room, all trance-like, and knocks at the door. He almost hopes he doesn’t get an answer.

“It’s me you want, isn’t it?”

“Yes. It is.” _I need solace,_ says Percival.

“Oh, you poor, bruised thing…”

Mordred treats him like a doll. He speaks to Percival as though he can’t talk back. Because that’s what he is for Mordred—he’s his new anchor. He’s another Galahad, another “pure” knight to be idolized and hailed as radiant.

“I dream of fire, you know that?” Mordred says. “I dream that one day Camelot will burn to the ground.”

He speaks between the rustling of clothes and sheets, between every bite. This isn’t how it should be, Percival thinks, but this is how it is. He thought it would be with Galahad someday, when they had no need to be holy anymore. It would not be so harsh and merciless as this, he thought. But it makes him feel something amidst the walking corpses of Camelot. Mordred’s body so close to his makes him feel almost whole and alive again.

“You’re mine to keep. You belong to me.”

It’s not love if you belong to someone only on the one end.

But Percival gives in because he wants it anyways. Because he shouldn’t have to be holy anymore—not when he tries to fix what isn’t. And maybe he is fixing Mordred after all. Maybe Mordred sees another knight who is pained as much as he is, maybe—

_“Galahad.”_

No. He’s just an illusion. He’s just painted Galahad over the surface because they both miss him.

“Galahad,” he whispers as he kisses Percival, “I’ve wanted you for so long. Do you know how much I’ve wanted you? Yet I failed to protect and help you when you needed it most. But now you’re here and I won’t ever let anything happen to you again.”

He can taste the salt of Mordred’s tears between the kisses. He is a corpse dug up from the grave, to be dressed in Galahad’s clothes and treated as though he were still alive. Mordred is holding onto a ghost, and he puts that long-gone soul inside of Percival, and spreads his paint all over the canvas. Green for tye eyes here, golden-blonde hair there, he replicates what he can never have on a corpse he’s found and is trying to re-animate.

Mordred tells him secrets. He tells him of Lancelot and the queen. He tells him that his father, the king, is oblivious because he _wants_ to believe his queen and most trusted knight are above it. He tells him how he’d always been so afraid to touch him—Galahad, not the real Percival he’s managed to catch—because he knows that Galahad is made of colors, and Mordred is not, and if he touches him that he’d be drained of color and fade. Because Mordred has always been the unwanted, the bastard, the son that was not supposed to exist and a reminder to his father of the mistake he’d made so long ago. That’s what he is—a mistake.

Percival does not think he is a mistake. Percival sees Mordred as a being of flesh and blood. And in Camelot, he is _dying_. He shouldn’t be. So it’s Percival’s job to save him. To fix him.

When it’s all said and done, he kisses at the bone of Percival’s wrist. Percival knows he’s a replacement. But at least he feels something for it. Mordred is almost pathetic atop him, trying to disguise his crying with desperation in the dark. He can touch him here. He wants to reach out again. He will fix Mordred. He will make sure that those deep dark eyes of his shine bright again. Perhaps he is ensnared in the web of the spider, something Kay tried to prevent. But what’s to say that maybe he can’t show the spider kindness?

Lying still in the dark of Mordred’s quarters, he waits to hear an “I love you”. He never does. But he does get up to leave.

“I can go, can’t I?”

“You should.”

_This is not for me._

The thought weighs heavy on his mind. It is the visor on his suit of armor that blocks out the rest of the world save for small slits of light.

_This is not for me._

He thinks this to himself as he stumbles back to his own room, cleans himself up, and crawls beneath the thin bedcovers.

_This is not for me._

This is what Percival thinks when he dreams of teeth that night. Wide open mouths with tongue and uvula framed by sharp teeth gleaming white, ready to rip his flesh from his skin and his muscles from his bones and to crack his bones in splintery halves, ready to gorge themselves drunk on the taste of his blood. He never knows what it feels like to die in that dream because he wakes up, but he thinks that Mordred wouldn’t be above devouring him.

Alone in the dark he has another dream. 

He dreams of Mordred stitching thread into his flesh so that when he moves, his limbs jerk about the way Mordred wants him to. It matters not that his flesh stings and gives way to decay with every jab of the needle beneath his skin, nor of the fact that his lips are only stitched into a smile. It matters not that the dark hair is torn from his head and his eyes scooped out to leave behind bloodied, gaping sockets. Mordred slips glass green eyes and replace the dark hair with fair, so that Percival stands in Galahad’s place as his puppet. He knows that the _real_ Galahad would never be a puppet.

And Mordred takes care of his doll with spindly fingers, sits him down and coos to him that he does love him. He’s loved him for a long time and he’s Mordred’s to keep. Then comes fire, melting away at flesh and causing the glass eyes to crack. Mordred is the fire, ready to burn Percival away and Camelot with him. He wakes up after he’s burned to nothingness in that dream, huddling beneath the blankets and shaking in the dark. For once, Percival doesn’t want to wake up to someone next to him.

He thinks about that dream for a while, burying his face in his hands. He does not cry, because he has no more tears to shed. But as he falls asleep again, there is one thought that still burns bright in the emptiness of his sleep-addled mind. _This is not for me._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> UPDATE 6/21/20: because i don't really have much motivation anymore, i... don't think i'll be able to finish this fic. maybe one day i'll return to it, but at the moment i will be leaving it at two chapters. i'm okay with the semi-ambiguous ending now, but there are other things i'm more eager to write about - i figured that explaining that would be better than leaving you all hanging <3 as usual, please take care of yourselves.
> 
> ...i was going to elaborate on mordred's intentions and what i'm trying to do, but i think that kind of defies what i aim to achieve with my works and what i personally believe when it comes to literary theory. so i guess: make of mordred and percival what you will, and if you're curious enough i will state my intent to you, but know that it's not official and not any more valid than any of your theories or beliefs about this fic.
> 
> also, i listened to "colors" by halsey on loop. i was right - playing a single song on loop DOES make me more productive.
> 
> thank you for reading. comments are always encouraged and appreciated. stay safe and take care c:

**Author's Note:**

> i listened to "don't you dare forget the sun" by get scared on loop as i wrote this and finished the entire chapter in one night - why don't i do that more often whenever i write longer fics?! i should.
> 
> i was planning on having four chapters originally, but then i thought of the potential symbolism if they were all named after the five stages of grief, but... eh. back to four chapters, because i feel like it doesn't really fit!
> 
> thank you for reading. comments are always appreciated.


End file.
